Reprinted by permission of The Christian Post
By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jun. 03 2008 12:35 PM ET
Some of the largest cities in America actually have the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per capita, according to a recent first-of-its-kind study that ranks the nation’s top 100 metro areas based on their climate change-causing pollution.
Honolulu, Los Angeles, and Portland boast the lowest per capita levels of global warming pollution, discovered the study “Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America” by Washington-based The Brookings Institution.
In fourth place is New York City, followed by Boise, Idaho; Seattle; San Jose, Calif.; San Francisco; and El Paso, Texas. San Diego rounds out the top 10 U.S. cities with the lowest per capita world warming pollution.
"Large metropolitan areas give their inhabitants smaller carbon footprints," explains energy policy expert Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and lead author of the study, according to Scientific American magazine. "Footprints are the smallest in areas with high density and good rail transit."
It’s worth noting that the study examined only fuel used in transportation and energy use in homes, and did not account for key contributors such as commercial buildings and industry, or transportation besides highways so as to ignore, for example, the air freight re-supply which Honolulu depends on, according to Scientific American.
It also failed to account for the mass suburban commuters in Los Angeles that contribute to the city’s carbon emissions.
Another key finding of the survey is that southern and eastern cities contribute the most to climate change because residents in these regions depend more on coal and cars than people in other areas of the country.
Residents in Lexington, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati emit the most greenhouse gases per capita among the nation’s top 100 metropolises. But it’s important to point out that these cities also have the burden of being major transportation hubs where freights are shuttled off to other parts of the country.
Other big emitters are Knoxville, Tenn.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Oklahoma City; St. Louis, Nashville; Louisville, Ky.; and Toledo, Ohio.
Authors of the report say their goal is to help cities reduce emissions by learning from cities that already have low levels of global warming pollution.
The study recommends the federal government pass policies that promote more transportation choices including shifting funds from highways to mass transit; introduce more energy-efficient freight operations; require home energy cost disclosure when selling to stimulate energy-efficient remodeling; use federal housing policy to create incentives for energy- and location-efficient decisions; among other suggestions.
But while authors of the report push for policies to curb global warming, some are voicing their opinion that while the earth may be warming it is not as catastrophic an event as many claim.
In May, a group of conservative Christians launched the “We Get It!” campaign which seeks to gather one million signatures for a statement that encourages Christians to look at the hard evidence, which they claim does not support the devastating degree of climate change claimed by mainstream society.
The campaign seeks to inform Christians about the biblical perspective on the environment and the poor, and educate believes on the devastating effects that current proposed policies will have on the poor in the world.
“It isn’t as though we think that the earth is here to be abused. It is not,” said Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “It is God’s creation and we have a responsibility to care for it and to do all that we can to help it be the place that God wants it to be.”
But “if humans are not causing the problem then it doesn’t matter how much we reduce CO2 emissions. It won’t make any difference,” he said.
Signers of the declaration said while they do acknowledge, in varying degrees, that global warming is real and humans are partly to blame for the earth’s warming, they believe that, for the most part, the heating of the earth is due to the natural warming and cooling cycle of the planet.
Some of the signers of the “We Get It!” declaration include Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.
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